Glued to the Book

Gawd, dontcha love it when someone that knows you well says, "You've got to read these books," places them in your hands and you go off to cave and fall in love with another writer? For me, it's almost better than sex. Almost.

The latest obsession, the author whose books my paws have gripped so tightly for the past two days is Simon R. Green - the Nightside series. I've read them back to back, loathing the interruption of phone calls and foregoing sleep and food. I am well and truly under the spell of great writing.

I seriously doubt Green would ever, EVER make literary lists. He's not that kind of writer. The addictive writers rarely are. His finely tuned mixture of hard-boiled P.I. meets Clive Barker makes for decadently horrific crime fiction.

The series lead, John Taylor, spent five years on the light side of London, trying to be a normal, down on his luck P.I. He'd fled the Nightside five years before, with a bullet in his back and a sense of his own mortality. But his birthplace, the Nightside, the flip side of London ruled by neither Heaven or Hell, pulls him back in. Back to peril, power and a destiny that could end his life and the existence of the Nightside itself.

Nothing is what it seems on the Nightside, and that includes John Taylor, champion of the down trodden and a P.I. that 'never let's a client down.' Whether that client is the distraught other of a runaway or Lady Luck herself. Taylor gets by on bravado, connections and an inheritance he hasn't come to terms with... he's the son of a human and a female of unknown origin that strikes fear into the strongest and most amoral of the Nightside's residents.

"Did those women really eat their dog?"

"I shrugged. 'Times were hard.'"

"And just what did you do to that poor bastard?"

"I stared him down."

That, my friends, is John Taylor.

For a great synopsis of each book, look here.

Green insists on a lack of web presence and, although available to fans, is not one to promote himself.

"IThe Nightside series
1) Something from the Nightside
2) Agents of Light and Darkness
3) Nightingale's Lament
4) Hex and the City (March 2005)
5) Paths Not Taken (Sept. 2005)6) A Mother's Son (working title)